This study has been pointed to by the Justice Department and by a number of politicians and organizations who favor restricting immigration. It’s also drawn sharp criticism from the Cato Institute and other researchers, who argue that the study misinterpreted data. Lott has stood by his research. . . .

But what about that claim that “right-wing terror” is on the rise? Fortunately, we have someone who has been compiling data on this subject for quite a while. That would be John R. Lott, Jr. of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He has a study outwhich breaks down mass shootings in the United States and around the world, analyzing the motivations and political or religious drive behind such attacks. Rather than seeing a rise in “right-wing terror” attacks, the opposite is true. In fact, the vast majority of mass shootings show no religious or political bias at all. . . .

You can download an Exel file of John’s data supporting this study. As usual, he develops meticulous, detailed data, just as he does with gun crime statistics.

As has typically been the case in the past, the vast majority of shootings where multiple people are injured or killed don’t have any identifiable “statement” behind them, with the possible exception of Islamic extremist attacks. (Still a relatively small portion of total shootings.) . . .

The study examined data from 2013 to 2015, a time period which almost perfectly bookends the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014, an episode that helped lead to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and placed increased scrutiny on police shootings. Yet, the research team of John Lott and Carlisle Moody found the percentage of black suspects killed in the 19 months before Brown’s death (24.8 percent) was almost exactly the same as the percentage killed in the 16 months after Brown’s death (25 percent).

Lott and Moody examined 2,699 police killings from more than 1,500 cities during the three-year time span — including 1,333 killings not recorded in the FBI’s official data. To gather the most precise information, the researchers scoured LexisNexis, Google, official police data and online databases.

The resulting spreadsheet also listed the race for suspects and officers. Putting together the racial component proved to be one of the more difficult tasks.

“News stories tend to not mention the race of the officer when the officer is black, because most of the black officers we found we found by looking at department photos, not news stories,” Lott said. “That was not true of white officers.”

Once the data was in place, the team controlled for various factors, including total population, racial makeup and, importantly, violent crime levels. A Washington Post article that gained popularity in the spring asserted that since black suspects made up 25 percent of those killed by police, but only 12 percent of the population, the disparity proved black people were more likely to be shot by police. . . .